books.google.com - "The distinguishing thing about the paranoid style is not that its exponents see conspiracies or plots here and there in history, but that they regard a 'vast' or 'gigantic' conspiracy as the motive force in historical events...The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of this conspiracy in apocalyptic terms--he...http://books.google.com/books/about/The_paranoid_style_in_American_politics.html?id=T1R3AAAAMAAJ&utm_source=gb-gplus-shareThe paranoid style in American politics, and other essays

The paranoid style in American politics, and other essays

"The distinguishing thing about the paranoid style is not that its exponents see conspiracies or plots here and there in history, but that they regard a 'vast' or 'gigantic' conspiracy as the motive force in historical events...The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of this conspiracy in apocalyptic terms--he traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values. He is always manning the barricades of civilization." --From the book

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Review: The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays

Another must read for understanding US history, especially relevant today.Read full review

Review: The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays

User Review - sologdin - Goodreads

pretty slick, even 50 years down the road. various essays on various topics, all insightful. eponymous essay is a true classic, detailing the variants of political paranoia, with attention to ...Read full review

About the author (1965)

DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University from 1959 until the time of his death, Richard Hofstadter was one of the most influential historians in post--World War II America. His political, social, and intellectual histories raised serious questions about assumptions that had long been taken for granted and cast the American experience in an interesting new light. His 1948 work, The American Political Tradition, is an enduring classic study in political history. His 1955 work, The Age of Reform, which still commands respect among both historians and general readers, won him that year's Pulitzer Prize. A measure of Hofstadter's standing in literary and scholarly circles is the honors he received in 1964 for Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1963)---Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction, the Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize of Phi Beta Kappa, and the Sidney Hillman Prize Award. Hofstadter's greatest talent, however, may have been his ability to order complex events and issues and to synthesize from them a rational, constructively critical perspective on American history.